Your Sunday Poem for the New Year
Take a few moments to center yourself at the beginning of a new year with powerful words by one of Britain’s greatest poets.
The new year arrives, for the speaker of In Memoriam and for many of us, during the darkest, coldest days of the year. In any given year we experience great joys and great sorrows. As the year comes to a close, we take the time to reflect and to look forward to new beginnings.
In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells] by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
In Memoriam A. H. H. is an elegiac poem written by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in memory of Arthur Henry Hallam, whom Tennyson met at Trinity College, Cambridge. They bonded over their mutual interest in poetry, and their close friendship would have become a brotherhood as Hallam was engaged to Tennyson’s younger sister. The early death of his dear friend was a shock to Tennyson and to his entire family, and it gave rise to the deep mourning that Tennyson’s speaker explores from a variety of perspectives.
In Memoriam is a major work of almost 3,000 lines, containing 133 cantos, with “Ring out, wild bells” found in the latter sections of the poem. Hallam died abroad and was brought home to England where he was buried in Clevedon, Somerset in January of 1834. In the poem, the speaker’s grief unfolds over the course of three Christmas seasons, with the final one ushering in the beginnings of hope and easing back into daily life once again.
The new year arrives in the deepest cold of the season. Tennyson renders this beautifully with his image of a “wild sky” full of the wind and frost of winter, but for him, this is a sacred time when the old year is dying away and leaving a space for new hope. You hear it in the energetic repetition of the words, to “ring out” all that would sink you down into despair and to “ring in” all that lifts you up into hope. The phrases are repeated throughout the poem, like a chant, or a rallying cry to a soul that has been too long lost in the depths of desolation. The most touching aspect of the poem is not the grief itself, but the sense, in the final stages of mourning, of simply being exhausted by all of the sorrow. There is a new hunger for something more, something better, for life once again. And this newly awakened speaker wants this not only for himself but for the entire world.
In Memoriam [Ring out, wild bells]
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky,
The flying cloud, the frosty light:
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells, across the snow:
The year is going, let him go;
Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more;
Ring out the feud of rich and poor,
Ring in redress to all mankind.
Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.
Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out my mournful rhymes
But ring the fuller minstrel in.
Ring out false pride in place and blood,
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.
Ring out old shapes of foul disease;
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand wars of old,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.
Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.
Writing Exercise: A New Year’s Poem
What do you hope to ring out this year, and what do you hope to ring in? Write it all down — like a chant or a rallying cry. You can place your New Year’s Poem on your refrigerator or tape it over your desk, as a reminder throughout the new year of what is truly important to you. And if you really like the results, hit publish!
